The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 02Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 02
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century
One thing that accompanies the passion in its first blush is certainly
difficult to explain. It comes (I do not quite see how) that from having
a very supreme sense of pleasure in all parts of life--in lying down to
sleep, in waking, in motion, in breathing, in continuing to be--the
lover begins to regard his happiness as beneficial for the rest of the
world and highly meritorious in himself. Our race has never been able
contentedly to suppose that the noise of its wars, conducted by a few
young gentlemen in a corner of an inconsiderable star, does not re-echo
among the courts of Heaven with quite a formidable effect. In much the
same taste, when people find a great to-do in their own breasts, they
imagine it must have some influence in their neighbourhood. The presence
of the two lovers is so enchanting to each other that it seems as if it
must be the best thing possible for everybody else. They are half
inclined to fancy it is because of them and their love that the sky is
blue and the sun shines. And certainly the weather is usually fine while
people are courting.... In point of fact, although the happy man feels
very kindly towards others of his own sex, there is apt to be something
too much of the magnifico in his demeanour. If people grow presuming and
self-important over such matters as a dukedom or the Holy See, they will
scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion
of a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be loved in
return. Consequently, accepted lovers are a trifle condescending in
their address to other men. An overweening sense of the passion and
importance of life hardly conduces to simplicity of manner. To women
they feel very nobly, very purely, and very generously, as if they were
so many Joan-of-Arcs; but this does not come out in their behaviour; and
they treat them to Grandisonian airs marked with a suspicion of fatuity.
I am not quite certain that women do not like this sort of thing; but
really, after having bemused myself over "Daniel Deronda," I have given
up trying to understand what they like.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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